November 17, 2005

Horseradish ice cream

For the second year I booked a suite at Mohegan Sun, on the whole a far nicer hotel than the smoky Foxwoods and only eight miles away but with no poker room. I had planned to play in the super satellite the day before the main event but the line was so long I decided to skip it and just bought in. I was assigned day two of the split field of 783 and drew table 11, seat eight. The only big name at my table was Dewey Tomko, who played very tight in the early going so I didn't mind having him at my table. There were a couple decent players at the table, two calling stations, and several blindly aggressive players. The mixture made it difficult to dominate the table and I contented myself with chopping out small pots, chipping up from my starting 10,000 to 16,300 by the end of level two.

After that, though, I had no luck. All my bluffs got raised and when I made a hand I got no action. I ended up getting my last 2000 in with King-Queen of Spades against Ace-Nine offsuit and lost the coinflip. There were about 250 left in day two so I called it 500th place or so.

Surprisingly, almost all my smart friends were also out early. The highlight of the trip was two dinners at Todd "Olives" English's Mohegan Sun restaurant, Tuscany, withMatt "Jacksup" Matros,Chris "21 Outs Twice" Fargis,Mark Gregorich, and Steve "Brec" Brecher. Other than the tuna tartare being topped with an outrageous chilled wasabi crema – essentially horseradish ice cream – the food was superb, especially the porterhouse. We washed it down with several bottles of 2003 Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel.

I flew back to Seattle for a brief stop before the upcoming Vegas events at Paris and the Plaza.